Doc Naan
by Kijakazibibi
Summary: When Captain John Watson meets a nice girl in the middle of a war, life gets complicated. Meanwhile, Sherlock dresses up as an Afghani, learns to talk to the animals, and wonders why everybody in this dust heap of a country calls him "Motherfucker".
1. Chapter 1

Summary: When Captain John Watson meets a nice girl in the middle of a war, life gets complicated. Meanwhile, Sherlock dresses up as an Afghani, learns to talk to the animals, and wonders why everybody in this god-awful dust heap of a country calls him "Motherfucker". Romance, violence, mayhem, and plotless adventure ensue, including but not limited to copious amounts of: swearing in multiple languages; careless shredding of historical fact and geographical reality; total disregard for any military organization, procedure, protocol and knowledge; Thomas Hardy-level coincidences; narrative blunders of the most obvious sort; and general crack and nonsense. Also, sex. But not right away. I like a little foreplay myself.

Notes: Yeah. If you didn't get it from the summary, this is very much a work in progress. I've got 3 and a half chapters written and no bloody idea where this is going whatsoever, but I'm hoping that by posting what I've got (a.) I'll quit tweaking it instead of writing new stuff and (b.) it will bust the logjam that is my brain. If not, I will be begging you my dear readers for help and suggestions. So...fasten your seat belts...Here we go.

"Told you he was a horse's cunny," McGraw says under his breath. "Shit, I'd give her my left nut if she wanted it."

John watches, along with the rest of his section, as she walks carefully past them, pulling the scarf up over her head so that it sits lightly at the top of a messy gathering of hair, a barely acceptable deference to local custom. Even so, like most women here, she walks by as if they are a herd of mangy, fly-ridden donkeys standing at the roadside and not worth her consideration at all.

"What about the right one?" Screamer asks.

"What?"

"Would you give her the right one if she wanted it?"

"Nah," McGraw says and sucks in the last of his cigarette before tossing the butt on the ground. "Ex-wife's already got that one."

"Fuckin' Yanks got no social graces at all." Bol tells them, grabbing up the rec forms and jumping down out of the cab. He puts on his battle face, the one that somehow seems to emphasize the red in the corners of his eyes and the tribal scars on his cheeks. John feels certain that Bol is not going to get the same chain-jerking run around that they had just observed the American sergeant giving this civilian aide worker.

Freed from having to try pulling rank on an American, John and Shea hang back then, leaning against the side front panel of the transport truck, enjoying the warmth radiating from the bonnet. The Afghan winter cold seems to have taken up permanent residence in John's core and his spine craves even this bit of heat, as if the unbearable scorch of the summer here had never happened.

John glances over to make sure the others are all engaged in posturing and dick measuring and whatever else it takes to free a couple pallets of cement from this particular colonial arsehole.

All clear. Except of course, for Shea

John shoves himself off the truck. "Going for a stroll."

Shea, who had been leaning his head back looks up and immediately grasps the situation. "Lookin' to get your arse handed back to you in a teacup then?"

John ignores him and pulls his glasses down against the sunlight.

She is across the road, leaning against the door of a battered rover much as he had been lounging on the transport, except her calm façade has broken. He can tell by the way she takes a pull on the cigarette between her fingers and then practically spits out the smoke. Casually, John checks the empty road for traffic and then wanders across in her direction. She looks up, stills herself and watches him through narrowed eyes. The wind blows the scarf off her head and tendrils of hair slip across her face. She pushes them back behind her ear.

She is truly lovely. And, John decides, it's not just the months stuck out in the desert with only men and goats around to make him think that.

"You're okay?" he asks.

"Just brilliant, thanks."

He leans against the battered vehicle behind her. The metal of this truck is cold, but the sun is warm on his face. She raises an eyebrow but doesn't turn her head to look at him, just takes another drag on her cigarette.

"Those things will kill you, you know," John tells her conversationally.

"Says the man carrying an assault rifle."

"And, as you can see, I am in the pink of health."

"Well, good. Let's hope that keeps working for you then." She takes another long, aggressive pull on the cigarette.

He quirks a smile, but doesn't look at her, keeps his eyes moving out of habit, even though there isn't much to see inside the huge U.N. compound.

_Not a lot going on at the war today, honey._

She huffs out the smoke again, doesn't bother to look at him when she talks. "Are you just here to flirt? Because I've got a husband. He's an American. Navy SEAL, loads of medals, mean as a snake."

"That's funny, because I've got a wife. Commando. Kind of reminds me of a rhinoceros with a bad case of the itch and a hangover, but only when she's drinking. She's as big and ugly as one all the time though."

"Liar."

"Just following your lead."

"Pussy-whipped in general then?"

John chuckles. "McGraw back there says he'd give you his left testicle if you asked. Don't think I'd go quite that far."

"Gosh. How lucky for me." She deadpans as she looks at the burning end of the cigarette for a long moment. She scowls at it suddenly and then tosses it away. Throwing off the badass motherfucker attitude just as casually, she suddenly washes her face with her hands. "Argh! No wonder the women are still wearing burkha here. It's not the fucking Taliban, it's all the bloody soldiers. You're so…"

"Handsome? Brave? Clever?"

"Stupid. Juvenile. Disgusting."

John pretends to talk to himself, as if he hasn't heard a word she said. "Unbearably sexy, but that just goes without saying. It's the uniform. And the guns. The big guns. And the really, really short hair. Throw in the sun burn, trench foot, jock itch…it's all just an irresistible package."

"Oh for god's sake, shove off, will you?" To demonstrate her meaning, she gives him a solid push with her two hands against his upper arm. For the last four months John has been humping more weight in armor and gear with him every time he leaves the base than she probably weighs dripping wet. He barely rocks in response to her push.

He grins at her. "I'm not going away that easy."

She thuds back against the rover again and re-covers her face with her hands. "I knew I shouldn't have gotten out of bed this morning."

John declines to make any comment about _her _and _bed_, although he certainly thinks about it for a long, lingering moment. Instead, he lets his head fall back again, closes his eyes, raises his face to the sun. The cold wind catches the scent of her and carries it past him and he tries to parse its bits: cigarettes, eucalyptus, something sweet from her hair – coconut oil maybe – and under it all, just that warm smell of _woman_.

The boy in him suddenly wants to wrap his arms around her and bury his face into the spots that he knows would be warm and soft: just under her chin, just behind her ear in the curtain of her hair. The boy in him craves that safety.

Sometimes he hates soldiering, living like he does on all adrenaline and testosterone. It's absurd. He calculates his time until next leave to the second. It's a very long time and she is standing right here and he can smell her.

Well…maybe it's not the _boy_ in him that wants so badly to hold her….

He expends some mental energy going over a few multiplication tables and drug dosage formulas just to get everything under control again.

"Goats," she says eventually.

"Sorry?"

"Goats. The orphanage had a herd of milk goats but last week one of them got hold of the wire on an IED and blew the whole lot of them to dogfood. So, no goats. No goats, no milk for the children. Some fine American church organization sent me four dozen cases of beans _with bacon_ a few months ago. Thought I could trade here for something I could trade out in the market for goats."

"You really believe any army wants _more_ canned beans?"

She rolls her eyes and shrugs. "Okay, so I really didn't think it through," she mutters, more to herself than John. "I used to be better at this kind of thing. Losing my edge." She sighs and squints into the sunlight. "Should have Betty Boop'ed him."

John looks at her out of the corners of his eyes and lifts an eyebrow. She turns toward him. Her dark eyes round big and she purses her lips, tips her head one way and her hips the other and lays a finger by the side of her mouth: classic bombshell airhead.

"Ah." He nods. "Yeah, that's how we got the cement off him. 'Course Bol there always throws in some bare chest."

She pulls a face, huffs and thuds back against the truck in defeat. "God, I _hate_ doing that kinda shit." She lifts her thumb and looks as if she's about to bite the cuticle, but then seems to remind herself not to and drops it again. She scowls instead, white teeth nipping at one corner of her full bottom lip and stares off away from John, obviously thinking. She gets very still.

John loves watching smart women think, so he watches her, openly, appreciatively. When she looks over at him after a minute, as if realizing he's still there he lets his eyes slide past her to the same distant, invisible point she'd been focused on, as if trying to see what she was looking at.

She goes back to thinking. He watches her do it for another few beats before he continues on with what he pretends is his reason for bothering her.

"You work for Little Wanderers then?" he asks, tapping the logo on the door of the Rover.

She glances down at it. "Right. Let me applaud you on your firm grasp of the obvious."

"Runs in the family. Do you know the kids pulled out of a no-name village near Baghek two weeks ago? A girl about twelve with a toddler and a baby? Some friendly little neighborhood squabble left everybody else dead."

She looks at him for a long moment. "Not just another day's work for you?"

"Some days are harder than others."

She thinks about this, studying him. This time he keeps his eyes steady on hers. "Yeah, they're with us. She doesn't say much, but physically she's fine. The wound on her arm is healing nicely. The little ones are good. Eating like horses. They always do." Her eyes catch on the medic badge stitched to the beret folded into his shoulder lapel. Something sparks. "Hey, what's your name then?"

"Watson."

"That's what you told the girl?"

"John. Well, Doc John, I think. Or maybe she overheard. Hard to reme—" She laughs suddenly, throws her head back and laughs a delighted and delightful jingle of sound. John smiles vaguely. "What?"

"You're Doctor Bread."

"Sorry?"

"One of the few things she ever says. _Doc nan…nan _is Dari for bread…_Doc Nan_…Doc John. That's got to be it. We've been trying to figure out what she means. _Doc Nan_." She looks at him seriously for the first time. "Guess you made an impression."

"Ah, yes, well…my winning personality seems to cross all cultural boundaries."

"Mmm." She shrugs with one shoulder doubtfully at that, but really smiles at him for the first time, pulls the blowing twists of hair out of her face again. "Come visit her."

"Oh…no…I just wanted to know…ummm…I don't know," John looks away, goes back to scanning, suddenly unsure of himself.

"Come on. Might do her some good to see a face she recognizes." She tips her head at him and he catches a twinkle in her eye as his look flits across her face and then over to Shea, who is pointedly ignoring them. "Come on. You guys are always looking for a PR opportunity."

John shakes his head. "My crew's mandate is to pull fire and then shoot back. We don't do the hearts and minds stuff. We save that for all the smart guys you see around here." The wind cooperates in making his point by blowing cold and dusty around the currently barren base. A pi-dog slinks across the road.

"I can have the kids throw stones at you if it would make you more comfortable. Some of them are spectacularly good at it."

He gives her a meaningful look. "Don't want to bring attention to you."

She shrugs. "Town's pretty pro forces – base is the best economic opportunity this place has had since Marco Polo passed through. No grubby Koran-spouting Mullah's going to get beyond any cold hard cash. They're just the means for the headmen to keep the money flowing." He'd argue with her except he knows she's right. "Besides, the Taliban is way too busy arguing over how many virgins dance on a round from a 115 to worry about a little collection of damaged children and worn out foreign whores."

He wouldn't describe her as worn out and he's aware that the Afghan definition of _whore _can be ridiculously broad, but he sees her point.

"Besides, you hang out with us and it will just confirm to them that you're nothing but a bunch of pussies."

"I prefer to think being nice to women and orphans has a quiet manliness and chivalry."

"Mmmm…Yeah, well, call it what you want but don't underestimate the advantage of an underestimate."

"We're not cowards." John can't help protesting.

"So why don't you come visit?" Her eyes sparkle with amusement. "Not afraid of a little girl, are you?"

He has been shamefully out-maneuvered. He huffs out a breath of laughter and shakes his head. "Nicely done."

John knows that she is perfectly aware that soldiers are afraid of little girls. Little kids in general, tumbling puppies, the soft laughter of a woman, the smell of baking bread…anything that seems like home. He steadies his eyes on her and she looks just as solidly right back at him. The irises of her eyes are so dark that even in the sunlight they look black. Big bad soldiers are definitely afraid of all kinds of girls.

Something thuds down hard inside John, like a trapdoor falling, or a guillotine.

John hears the truck's gate slam home and out of his peripheral vision sees Shea stir himself. He looks back at her one last time.

"Right. I'll see what I can do."

"Yeah?"

"I'm just in town for the day. We convoy back up into the Alamo tomorrow."

"The Alamo?"

"West Bank of the Helmand," he indicates with his chin. "Yanks are calling it the Alamo."

"Bloody pessimists."

"It's not so bad, considering. We let them have Maiwand."

She laughs and he smiles back. He would give anything to stand here longer and watch her laugh. She squints a little bit at him again in a way that he thinks is already incredibly familiar and that he won't forget. "So, you'll visit? Yes?"

"Doc! Quit fondlin' your dick. We're off!"

"I can't make it a promise."

"I wouldn't dream of considering it one." She smiles, satisfied. "But I'm all for quiet manliness and chivalry myself."

John ducks his head, hopes she thinks it's the wind and the sun bringing the blush up in his face. Then he trots back across the road just as the truck backs around. It stops as Bol shifts it into first and John grabs the door McGraw holds open and swings himself up. They all look at her as they go past, but she's back to regarding them as less than a herd of jackasses.

"So, which one?" McGraw asks, "Left or right?"

John ignores him.


	2. Chapter 2

John is standing inside the hovel again and the girl is cowering between the upended cot and the wall. Peering over her shoulder at him is a toddler of about three and a baby strapped to her chest cranes around to look at him too. All of them are absolutely silent. Three sets of eyes, large and dark, stare at him over a cultural gap so vast he may as well have time traveled here from 2000 years in their future. Between him and her is the only thing they have in common: the Browning L9A1 that she has pointed straight and steady at his face. His own Browning is still in its holster, but he makes up for it by having his 80 assault rifle centered on her narrow chest.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph on a big fuckin' white donkey," Shea hisses under his breath, standing just behind John. Shea also has the latest in modern combat weaponry pointed at the little trio : on full automatic he could fire his 30-round magazine in less than half a minute – well, maybe half-a-minute given the amount of dust in the air slowing the action just a bit.

Silence drags out forever between them. Outside, further to the north of this building John can hear the clean-up rattle of return fire from his secondary fire team. They've cleared out most of the insurgents here, chased them off or killed them.

Sun glints down through the window between them, dust falling like stars through the light. There are dead bodies strewn through the room. Men, women, other children. John can smell the stink of their deaths: blood, bile, shit. They weren't killed by John's men, nor the ANA unit that got themselves pinned down in the gully just below and called in John's section for help. This happened closer at hand and was far more brutal. It was done with knives and bludgeons and close pistol fire. It was personal.

The girl and John stare at each other. Trying to keep his eyes on John, the baby takes his fist from its mouth and twists uncomfortably in the sling. "Bah…bah. Bahh..Bah. Bah. Bah." He says with finality, then blows a loud, wet raspberry.

"Not sure, but I think he just called you a motherfucker."

"He's not the one I'm worried about."

The baby shoves his fist back into his mouth. No more negotiations.

"Back off, Shea."

"Doc…."

"Slow. Just back off. Do it."

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph."

John watches the girl's eyes shift briefly to Shea as he starts to move. Her eyes widen, flash from Shea to the window in the wall just beside and ahead of John and then back to John's eyes. She stirs slightly and Shea freezes.

"Easy." John says quietly. "Okay. Easy everybody."

"You stop." The girl says, or at least that's what John thinks he hears. Her accent is thick and she's speaking barely above a whisper. He nods and watches as she slowly pulls her finger from the trigger, clicks the safety back on the gun. She does it without looking, keeping her eyes on John's. Carefully balancing the pistol on her thumbs and spread fingers she lowers it to the floor.

John points to it with his chin and then jerks his head sideways. She reaches out with one sandaled foot and kicks the gun away. John uncoils a bit, moves his finger off the trigger of his own gun.

Her eyes shift from John to the window and back again.

She shakes her head minutely, a bare quiver that he would probably dismiss as a breath if every one of his senses wasn't on a hair trigger. She leans back, presses the toddler who has squatted down to hide behind her tighter against the wall, pulls her knees up closer to herself and tucks her chin down over the baby's head, even as she keeps her eyes steady on John's. There might be two thousand years of culture between them, but he knows a crash position when he sees one.

"Shea! Down!" John shouts and drops himself into a ball seconds before the RPG round whooshes through the window, blows into and through the wall opposite and explodes in the next room with a sound oddly distant and hollow.

John jerks awake.

"Doc."

John's gasping in the darkness, trying to orient himself out of the dream. His hand grips the edge of the bunk. There's an echoing boom in the distance, like the one in his dream.

"Doc." It's Bol's voice from the cot below John's. "Sounds like Mala gets the morning call to prayer today." There is a line of British bases running along the Helmand River like knotted pearls set on a string. FOB Mala is the next base north of their post at FOB Agha.

"Yeah," John grunts, rubbing his hands across his eyes.

"Better them than us."

"Yeah." John's quiet for a long minute, trying to get his heart to settle. "Bol."

"Yeah, Doc?"

"Sorry if I woke you."

Another mortar explosion cracks through the purple dawn, resounding again and again as the echo rolls down through the draws in the shallow mountains. Moments later there's the staccato spitting of a 40 mil returning fire.

"When I was a kid in Sudan," Bol says eventually, "and the North bombed us at night my auntie used to tell us to pretend that it was thunder and that we would wake in the morning to fresh rain and green grasses."

"You lived in a desert, Bol."

"Yeah, well, my auntie meant well. She was a nice lady, but not very bright."

John smiles in the dark. He understands that auntie, the desire to give comfort by trying to make the unthinkable something perfectly natural. How else do you live when somebody you don't know is always trying to kill you?

"Shouldn't let that girl get to you, Doc."

"Where did she get that Browning, Bol? How did she know how to use it?"

Bol sighs, he's heard it before. "The things people teach their kids these days."

"Yeah. Bol could only field strip an AK by the time he was eight." Shea gravels. "Had no idea how to aim it."

"Nobody actually aims an AK, Shea." Bol tells him.

"I could field strip Mary Freer with my eyes closed by the time I was twelve." McGraw puts in.

"That's 'cause you didn't want to open your eyes and see her laughing at your wee Scottish haggis."

"Fuck you, you Feinian cocksu—"

Somebody outside kicks the wooden hut door with a resounding smack. "All of you chickens quit your clucking or I'm coming in there and rousting you out 'cause I sure as hell could use some fucking sleep instead of standing out here freezing my balls off."

"Yeah? Forget to put your trousers on again, then, Screamer?" Shea asks.

The door flies open with a blast of cold air and when John blinks at the deep predawn blue he sees white swirling through it. Snow.

Something shoots in through the open doorway and makes a spattering sound close to Shea's bunk.

"Fuckin' hell, Screamer. You're a dead man now aren't you?" And Shea is out of his bunk and out the door wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and the untied boots he dropped into.

"Snowball fight!" McGraw yells and piles out behind Shea.

John and Bol don't move. They listen as the scuffle rolls through the base like an ambush. The whole hut bangs and shudders with the impact of somebody getting thrown into it. There's a howl of laughter outside.

"John?"

"Yeah, Bol?"

"I think you're going to have to explain to me one more time why you whites think blacks are uncivilized."

John smiles up at roof of the hut as it quivers again from another impact. Bol is, without a doubt, the most patently kind, generous and polite person he knows. He is also a fearless and ferocious warrior.

"It's not that little girl that's got you all keyed up anyway, John."

"No?"

"No. It's that other one. The aid worker."

"Oh, you think so?"

Bol laughs low and deep. "I've played poker with you, man, you're hopeless."

John lets his thoughts slide to the aid worker whose name he doesn't even know. He thinks about the scent of her and an ache starts deep in his throat. He tries to swallow it.

"What do you know about goats, Bol?"

"I come from a very long and illustrious line of goat herders."

John smiles to himself, but the smile fades when he realizes it has gone deathly silently outside.

"Bol?"

"Doc?"

"Incoming."

They scramble as the door swings open and a barrage of snowballs blinds them.


	3. Chapter 3

"You don't know a goddamn thing about goats, do you Bol?"

"These aren't African goats, Doc."

"Yeah, even I can figure that much out. So what?"

"It's different, Doc."

"_How_ is it different, Bol?"

"In Africa, the women deal with the goats. It's not a man thing."

"So the long line of illustrious goat herders?"

"All women."

"Well, you ought to do just fine then." John scowls.

Procuring a couple of goats turns out to be an amazingly difficult and expensive task in a country that is lousy with the things. Within a few days word has gone out through the neighborhood that somebody at FOB Agah wants goats and suddenly peace breaks out in their little square of war. The locals set aside their guns or at least manage to get the Taliban to set aside theirs, then gather up their stock and come in for endless cups of tea and extended negotiations.

By the time the fifth herder shows up the whole base knows that they're on a mission to buy goats for an orphanage and probably at least John's section has sussed out why. When he figures out which one of them let it all slip he's going to duty the bastard with shit-burning until the end of tour.

Bol hangs in there with him through negotiations, despite having been uncovered as a fraud and a possible gossip because he is, still, a good man at heart. Tarkani the unit interpreter and cultural liason stays too. And Shea's there because he simply cannot resist an opportunity to take the piss out of John. Everybody else sits back in position inside the post and giggles.

"So, you don't have the slightest idea what to look for in a goat?" John asks Bol.

Bol smiles sweetly. John glances at Tark.

"Don't look at me, man, I grew up in Cambridge."

Tark joined the Army imaging that he would be negotiating with top Afghani officials using the highly ornate court Farsi he'd learned from his parents only to find himself having to shout orders at illiterate farmers in a colloquial language he barely understood. It is a bit of an issue for Tark. This situation is not helping.

"Come on, Bol, you've got to know something."

Bol shrugs.

"Ah, for Christ's sake it's just like a woman, you look for big tits and wide hips."

"Thank you Mr. Shea, and I suppose that piece of wisdom comes from generations of fucking Irish sheep?"

"No, you syphilitic English ponce, it comes from my common sense. Something none of you lot seem to have any of."

The snow from a few days before has melted and run off, leaving the ground smooth and concrete hard beneath the blankets and carpets laid out for the meeting. The weather feels like a cool spring day. Bol's willingness to lounge around laughing and drinking tea, along with his immense size and scarred face goes a long way to gaining them a certain amount of respect and John's innate sense of fairness manages to smooth over some of his obvious impatience.

"What about those two?" John says after a preliminary of the kind of tea and court courtesies he would expect from a visit with the Queen. He points at the largest pair of goats in the milling collection browsing the nearby shrubbery. Bol lifts a skeptical eyebrow at the pair in question. Much head shaking and muttering amongst the sellers and audience ensues. "Tark?"

"Can't do it Doc."

"What's wrong with them?"

"Haven't the faintest. But the guy who's selling them is a son-in-law to the headman from the next village. If you buy his goats you're going to insult our headman here. Could make all kinds of trouble for us."

"So where are the headman's goats?"

John waits for an answer. Eventually, two scrawny, scabby beasts are dragged forward. John looks at Bol who shakes his head sadly.

"Oh, like you know."

"I don't need to know to know that _that _is an insult to you, me and the whole British way of life."

"Alright, Tark, find out what that's all about."

Another long pause while John works on keeping his composure. He thinks about how this kind of shit makes zen meditation and staring at the sun seem easy.

"He says these goats are the only ones he can spare. He says he would give you better ones at a good price, but since we destroyed his opium fields he can't spare the livestock. He has to feed his kids, pay his eldest daughter's dowry. He has to support his brother's family since the British blew up his hou—"

"Yeah, alright, back to that again, are we? I get it. Let him know I cannot reimburse his brother for the house. If his brother hadn't let the Taliban use his roof as a mortar launch at us maybe he'd still _have_ a roof and if snipers didn't hide out in his damn poppy fields air support wouldn't be blowing holes in them. Just ask him how much a couple _decent_ goats would be and tell him, that I'm insulted he would offer me those mangy tubercular worm-riddled specimens after I've given him tea and the last of my personal stash of Scottish shortbread."

"Doc, you can't sa—"

"Well, clean it up, Tark, you're the interpreter, not me."

It takes most of the day and enough sugary tea that John is afraid he's going to throw himself into a diabetic coma or at least have his kidneys fail, but he finally becomes the owner of two milk goats plump with kids and looking relatively healthy as far as Afghani livestock are concerned. The headman can barely contain his pleasure at the pile of English pound notes in his hand and even forgets to make a last final plea regarding his brother's real estate. The son-in-law of the leader from the next village throws a dark scowl at John as he starts off back into the hills.

"Bet I know which direction the next mortar attack will be coming from." Shea notes indifferently, scowling back at the man and his party.

"Yeah, so let's make sure these goats are well sheltered because I am _not_ going through that again."

"You know, Doc, most guys just have a wank when they're horny. It's a hell of a lot easier."

"Don't you be jibing the Doc, man." Bol says clucking at the goats under his tongue and expertly tapping at the backs of their legs with a stick to keep them in line as they climb up the hill towards the base. John eyeballs Bol suspiciously. "He has the soul of a real black. Everybody knows you got to court classy women with goats and cows. None of this hoping to get them drunk enough to fuck you like you white tribals are always trying. That's not the way a true man goes about it."

"Yeah, well, either way you better get yourself laid, Watson, because otherwise I'll shoot you myself if you keep carrying on like this."

It's actually much easier, despite regulations against transporting non-military animals to get the goats shipped back to base than it was to purchase them. John calls in a favor on a helicopter pilot. When the pilot balks Screamer, who's taken to the goats and orphans idea in a big way, gets a friend at Bastion to come up with a photo of the pilot on his last leave in Italy in the arms of a truly hideous Romanian prostitute and the email address of the pilot's wife. The pilot reconsiders and agrees to pick up the goats on the next resupply.

John's section isn't scheduled to go off post for another two weeks after the resupply. He'd initially thought to hold onto the goats until then, but soon realized the whole section would insist on being a part of the delivery. John definitely does not want to arrive at her door with that circus in tow, so they crate up the goats in some boxes they bang together from pallet wood and hoist them into the Lynx while the pilot scowls bloody murder at them.

"Make sure they get delivered alive and well to Father Bradley," John reminds the pilot over the comm system he borrows from the gunner as they load the bleating goats.

"Fuck you, Watson. I'm dropping them out over the next village. How many jinglies you think one goat can take out from 2,500 metres?"

"Yeah? That hooker...? You notice how well you can see her mustache in that shot?"

"Again, Watson, fuck you."

John chuckles good-naturedly. "No, sir, fuck you very much." He twists the comm set off his head and, with a big grin, thumbs up the pilot, waves bye-bye to the goats.

"He's gonna drop them, Doc." Bol predicts.

"No he won't. They're for the orphans. Everybody loves orphans. Besides, he knows I've got God on my side." Unlike most Army padres, there's a lot of respect on base for Father Bradley. Mostly because he's a big, jolly St. Nick of a man who drinks and swears like the rest of them and, when he bothers to talk about God at all makes Him sound like some senile grandfather who spends most of His day doddering around in a rose garden. John is very fond of him and knows without asking that when two airsick goats in homemade crates with "Little Wanderers Orphanage" scrawled across the ends show up at the door to the Padre's hut they will end up where they're supposed to be.

It helps that the Padre owes John a few.


	4. Chapter 4

"Now don't you just look like shit?"

Sherlock, managing an upright position and consciousness only by squatting in the shadow thrown by the mud brick wall at his back, opens his eyes just a slice. There is nobody near him, certainly not an overly-familiar American determined to blow his cover. A stray cat saunters over and sits down next to him, gazing out towards the road and looking about as interested in Sherlock as it is in the dirt under its paws. It's a miniature panther of an animal, all sinew and muscle over a broad, heavy frame encased in a scarred black pelt. Both ears are shredded and one eye is milky and half-closed.

Sherlock sighs and closes his eyes again. He must be hearing things.

"Got milk?"

For days now Sherlock's been trying to keep the amoebas colonizing his gut from making an empire of it with oral doses of antibiotics and massive applications of the best British bowel cement money can buy, but he knows he's going down under a relentless onslaught of invaders. He's been hallucinating off and on for the last twenty-four hours. Earlier in the day he could have sworn he saw Mycroft standing in a poppy field, leaning on that ridiculous umbrella of his like a soft shoe dancer or somebody's demented idea of a scarecrow.

Something bumps lightly against his knee.

"Don't be an ass, motherfucker. I am so on to you."

Sherlock squints his eyes open again and looks down at the cat. It gives him a brief, assessing stare and then looks away. "If you're an Afghan I'll hump a pooch."

Sherlock blinks his eyes wider, then takes a quick look around. Nobody else seems to have heard anything. A few men and boys pass by in the street and head into the bazaar just beyond. They pay no attention to a lone man and a stray cat resting in the shade of a compound wall. It's lucky enough for Sherlock that in these smaller Afghani towns, it often doesn't pay to be overly curious about strangers passing through.

Sherlock keeps his eyes on the cat. It glances at him briefly. "Look, motherfucker, Afghan men sit on their asses with their legs crossed, they don't squat. Only time a man sits like that is when he's taking a dump, which, by the way, is _exactly_ how you smell."

Sherlock thinks this one through for a long minute. A part of him realizes how spectacularly impressive this hallucination is. The cat's mouth moves when it speaks. He figures he cannot be _that_ ill if his fever dreams have some sense to them. If the cat was communicating with him via telepathy or something outrageous like that it would be a signal that his brain is too fried to make living worthwhile. He might as well just turn himself in to the Taliban right there.

As for the tell, another glance around proves that the cat is right. The men in the shops nearby sit cross-legged on carpets or low stools. None of them squat on their haunches like he does. He slips a bit further down the wall, crosses his ankles and spreads his knees. The talking cat, he reasons, is a projection of the survival part of his brain, giving him a way to keep focused despite his fever and dehydration.

Either that or Doctor Doolittle will have to be moved out of the fiction section of his personal library.

"Got anything to eat, motherfucker? MRE's? Peanut butter? I like the peanut butter ones. The jalapeno cheese ones are good too, but they give me ass problems." When Sherlock doesn't say anything the cat leans forward and butts his knee with its head again. "What's the deal here, motherfucker? You owe me, man. I probably just saved your sorry ass from some serious al-Qaeda inspired screwby."

"You're an hallucination," Sherlock murmurs without moving his lips, just to see what happens.

The cat considers this for a moment and then, in a flash, lays back what's left of its ears and bats at Sherlock, tearing a claw down the back of his hand and bringing up four dotted lines of blood. It leaps sideways out of reach before Sherlock can even react.

"Hallucinate _that_ for a while, motherfucker." The cat sits down glaring and switches its tail angrily in the dust.

Sherlock presses his bloody hand into one of the less dirty folds in the baggy trousers he has on under his long tunic. He studies the cat as it twitches its skin until the fur on its back lies flat again and then sets about meticulously washing its face. After it's thoroughly dampened and wiped through the right side of its face and chest it goes to switch paws and freezes when it catches Sherlock's eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Christ, you're a Brit, aren't you? Figures. You goddamn Brits always think you know everything. Nobody can tell you nothing. Still walking around acting like you own the whole fucking world. Can't learn from your own damn mistakes. I mean, just _look_ at what happened in 1880 at Maiwa—"

"Oh, don't start," Sherlock sighs and starts to close his eyes again.

"No English, motherfucker!"

Shuhab appears from nowhere to stand beside Sherlock. He's holding a clay cup of tea and a round of flatbread in his grubby hand. The boy squats down next to Sherlock and offers the tea while looking suspiciously at the cat. Shuhab is the latest and dodgiest in a string of decidedly questionable minders that have accompanied Sherlock over the border from Peshawar, Pakistan and south towards Kandahar. Mycroft assured Sherlock of the loyalty of his contacts, but that was a dubious place to start from itself. Sherlock can't decide if his doubts about Shuhab have merit, or are the result of the general uneasiness one is likely to feel when one is somewhat dependent on a surly thirteen-year-old carrying a Kalishnakov.

Putting his doubts aside for a second, Sherlock sips carefully at the tea. He hopes it has been boiling long enough to kill whatever lives in the local water. He hasn't been very lucky on that score so far. He swallows a mouthful and grits his teeth against the protesting clench in his belly.

"Why are you speaking English to an Afghan cat? Afghan cats only speak Pashto," Shuhab demands in his spoiled brat way and then shouts at the cat. "_Drumma! Zarak shaw!_" The cat ignores him, oozing utter indifference.

"Maybe he only speaks Farsi." Sherlock says in Farsi because his Pashto is shaky and, more to the point, his classic Persian irks Shuhab. Usually the two of them communicate in a patois of Farsi, Pashto, English and sign language interspersed with Shuhab's truly impressive multilingual collection of curse words. Shuhab scowls at him and fingers through the dust for a stone.

While it can't be bothered with him unarmed, the cat clearly knows better than to take its chances with any kid holding a rock. In a sudden scatter of dust and pebbles it shoots off along the wall and disappears under a gate before the boy can even cock his arm.

Sherlock feels strangely disappointed at the loss of a focus point for his hallucinations. He frowns.

"Drink, motherfucker. We go to my cousin's house for the night in the next village. These people here are _bhenchad_. They will kill us if we stay here."

Sherlock knows perfectly well that Shuhab has no cousin in the next village, just the name of a contact with a safe house. Furthermore, he doubts a sister-fucking penchant exists here more than in any other place, but Shuhab is probably right about how the people in this village regard them. It might not be safe to ask strangers questions around here, but it's often perfectly acceptable to shoot them.

"How far?"

Shuhab shrugs. "Two, three kilometers is all."

Shuhab doesn't have the slightest idea how far a kilometer is. He could mean anywhere from ten feet to twenty miles. Sherlock drinks the dregs of the tea and breathes slowly through the new set of cramps it causes. Sweat breaks out on his forehead at the same time that he shivers.

"Alright," he grunts and reaches out. Putting his hand against the wall he levers himself up off the ground. He keeps his hand pressed to the mud brick. He waits for the world to stop tilting.

"Okay, motherfucker, no more English, now. Got it?" Shuhab asks, trying to look around as stealthily as possible and only managing to look exceedingly suspicious.

If Sherlock had the energy, he'd roll his eyes, but he doesn't.

Shuhab hands him the walking stick he carries as a guard against dogs and increasingly now, as a prop against stumbling. He glances back, hoping the cat might be willing to follow, but it has vanished and with it, Sherlock worries vaguely, whatever is left of his sanity.

Of course everything is worse at night. The fever climbs and it's harder for him to keep straight what is real and what is the result of electrolyte imbalances, misfiring synapses, his brain overheating in the caldron of his skull. Dreams and reality chase each other in circles across his conscience like glinting fish in a bowl. He wakes sweating and overheating under the blankets Shuhab's "cousin" lent him.

Shuhab and his "cousin", a man who appears old enough to be Shuhab's grandfather several generations back, argue in whispers on the other side of the room, their faces made monstrous by the long, yellow light of a kerosene lamp on the floor. The tiny dung-fueled brazier between Sherlock and the two Afghanis throws out more smoke than heat and Sherlock coughs and stirs. The coughing raises the lump of nausea in his throat and he feels a warning kick in his belly, his mouth flooding suddenly with saliva.

Shuhab hushes the old man and comes to stand over Sherlock who struggles out of his bedding.

"My cousin says you cannot stay here," Shuhab says. "There is a storm coming and the Taliban come to stay with the storm. My cousin says take you to the British army base. My cousin is _una puta cobarde. _He should wear burkah and _daga me ra wazbaisha_."

"Help…" Sherlock ignores Shuhab's words for now, but grips the boy's arm and gets him to lift him from the ground and lead him out the door. The night is clear and the cold helps him hold back for another minute as Shuhab steers him to a narrow alley between the building and the compound wall where he can retch without making a mess of the courtyard.

"Go 'way."

For once Shuhab readily obliges and Sherlock is vaguely aware of the sound of his retreating feet and the creak and crunch of the door closing.

Sherlock squats, leaning forward into the wall his fingers scratching into the crumbling mud surface and vomits onto the ground between his knees. The bit of bread and yogurt he'd forced down before bed comes up in a gout of water and bile. His stomach continues to heave even after there is nothing left inside him, leaving only a bit of spittle stringing out of his mouth.

He waits it out. Even though his heart is pounding and he can barely catch his breath he knows he just has to wait it out until the convulsions in his gut start to lessen and he can close his mouth again and gather up enough saliva to spit at least a bit of the bitter taste from his tongue. He keeps his hands on the wall and leans forward until his cheek settles against it also. He groans again and gasps great draughts of cold air, trying to settle himself, trying to get a grip. He is shaking uncontrollably.

"Just look at you now, little brother," Mycroft says out of the darkness.

"Go away, Mycroft."

"I should have sent one of my people."

"Go away. I'm fine. I can do this. You know I'm the only one she'll listen to."

"There you go overestimating yourself again. Am I forever going to be pulling the two of you out of the mud you throw yourselves into before you drown?"

"We're quite capable of swimming on our own."

"It certainly doesn't look like it from here."

"You always do only see what you want to see. Piss off, Mycroft. I mean it."

"And you only hear what you want to hear."

"_Fuck off!_" Sherlock roars.

Something small and soft thumps up against him. "You are hands down the _worst_ goddamn spy I have ever seen." It's the cat. It rubs its flanks against his thigh.

Sherlock starts to laugh out loud.

"Will you shut the fuck up you goddamn fool?" The cat hisses, crouching beside him. "Or do you just _want_ me to take you down to the local mosque so you can march around singing _Onward Christian Soldiers_ at the top of your jackass lungs?"

Sherlock tips backwards until he's sitting with his back to the outside wall. He puts his arm to his mouth and bites down hard into cloth and flesh, trying to stifle his hysteria, hoping the pain will give him focus. His other hand falls down beside him and the cat steps over and, surprisingly, shoves it head under his palm like a pet wanting to be stroked.

Sherlock curls his fingers around the cat's shoulders and chest. It's purring. He feels the vibration in his fingertips. The tension in his shoulders and back drains reflexively at the soft, warm touch of the animal's fur. It's the first live thing Sherlock has touched since leaving England.

The cat leans forward and sniffs at the mess near Sherlock's feet. "Hey, is that yogurt? You got any left?" Without waiting for an answer the cat bolts around the corner and starts crying desperately at the door.

Sherlock unfolds slowly from the ground and eases his way around the corner. He stops with his back to the wall by the doorway. He knows he should go in and rest and try to figure out what the hell Shuhab was nattering on about, but the room is only marginally warmer than outside and the air rank, the dark claustrophobic. He slips down to his haunches again and leans his head back, staring up into the vast, bright heavens heavily streaked grey with fast-moving clouds. He breathes in long, slow sips of cold air as if it was cool, clean water for his parched body.

He has no idea how long he's been sitting there when Shuhab flings open the door so that it bangs back against the wall and almost slams closed again. The old man catches it and follows him out while the cat slips by unobserved by anyone except Sherlock. The old man starts speaking gently and earnestly to Sherlock, but his Pashto is slurred by his lack of teeth and obscured by the cicada-like hum screaming in Sherlock's head. Shuhab tries translating in his usual enigmatic way and Sherlock cannot make heads or tails of any of it beyond "British Army base".

"No British Army base," Sherlock says in Pashto, panting between phrases. "I cannot go to the British Army base. Kandahar. I must get to Kandahar."

"Is days to Kandahar, motherfucker. And you are very sick. And the big storm is coming and the Taliban will come shelter here in this house any time and so you must go to the British Army base now or you will die."

"I'm fine."

The old man starts to speak again, leaning over Sherlock, talking louder and more urgently, as if that would make him understand better. Shuhab tries to translate but all Sherlock can manage is to stare vacantly into the middle distance and listen to the hum in his head. The two Afghanis start to argue with each other since neither can get a response out of Sherlock.

The cat, licking its lips, saunters out of the room, past the two arguing men, around Sherlock and settles down next to his thigh. "What's their damage?" he asks Sherlock after a long moment. Sherlock starts, shrugs and rolls his eyes.

The cat burps and licks its lips again. Then, it turns its full attention on the two men, squaring its ears upright and forward for a long moment. It gets distracted by a falling snowflake. Then another. A dog barks distantly in the valley behind them and the cat turns its head that way. It looks back at Sherlock. "Seems you're a liability."

"I am fine," Sherlock hisses between gritted teeth.

The dog barks again, answered by another that sounds a bit closer and the cat's ears radar around to listen. Then it looks up into the sky as more snowflakes tumble down. A wind gust swirls a cloud of dust through the courtyard and pushes the snow slantwise.

"You're shit out of luck, big guy," the cat declares. "Old man's right – Taliban's comin' to town for the duration and from the smell of you you're half-dead already so it's the Army base or Nirvana with 42 virgins, which always just seemed like hard work to me. Ever fuck a virgin? Booooring. And all that emotional crap afterwards….I'll take a pussy that's been around the block a few times any day, especially if she's got extra toes…."

"I don't know whether to be reassured or terrified that you are just a figment of my imagination," Sherlock responds tiredly. If a cat could smirk, that's what it does. Sherlock's about to shoo the animal away when he realizes the arguing has stopped and he looks up to see Shuhab and the old man staring at him.

"I'm fine," Sherlock says, lunging to his feet and tottering like a drunk. "No British Army base." He declares, takes two steps out into the courtyard and drops like a stone.


End file.
